The Fountainhead

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This quote was written by George Orwell in his book Animal Farm, one of Orwell’s most famous novels. Throughout history the subject of a distant dystopia has always been explored in many works of literature. The possibility of humanity falling into a bleak and totalitarian society has always fascinated readers. These stories and themes can come to define an author and their legacy as a writer. There is no greater example of…

Anthem Essay ` Ayn Rand, an author of precise themes and storylines, initially wrote Anthem praising a person's individuality in a society where nobody is individual. During this literature, character Equality 7-2521 learns there is much more to know than what he has been told. This story establishes the facts on a society where everyone is held equal, to the point where first person does not exist. Throughout the novel Anthem, Ayn Rand shows the development of Equality 7-2521’s individualism…

Born February 2, 1905, Ayn Rand published her first novel, We the Living, in 1938. Soon after, she published Anthem in 1938. Her working title for this short novel was Ego. She did not mean of it as a symbol of the self- but specifically Man’s Self. Ayn Rand praises a man’s ego because she is upholding the principles of her philosophy and of her heroes: reason, values, volition, individualism. When Ayn Rand was a teenager, she lived in Soviet Russia. She had escaped Russia because of the…

The novel “Anthem” was written by a Russian-American author known as Ayn Rand. Her philosophy consisted of Objectivism; reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception. Anthem was written in 1937 when Ayn Rand was 32. During this time, Russia was undergoing a purge; known as, the Great Purge. The novel shares the same societal characteristics as Russia which was undergoing a communist revolution since 1917 led by Josef…

Sinister Motivation Ayn Rand’s book, Anthem raises the question what would life be like in a completely equal and unknowing world. In a society where there is no individualism and the Council of Vocations controls life; one man rises up and protests the ideas of this society. Equality 7-2521 learned rather quickly in the Home of Students, unlike the rest of them, he understood lessons before they were spoken; however this was considered a sin in society. Within the community no man is…

One of the most interesting symbols in Ayn Rand's book Anthem is the lack of "I." The main character, Equality 7-2521, lives in a society where there is no "me" or "my." There is only "we." This absence, the negation of the individual, is predicated on the idea that "It is a sin to think words no others think. . . . It is base and evil" (17). Even speaking "I" is an act punishable by death. Throughout this work, Rand draws on the absence of "I" in order to illustrate the overarching theme of…

Part A: Dystopia Essay In the novel Anthem by Ayn Rand the word “I” is lost and there is no individual because people are slaves to the society's system in which everyone's lives are being controlled by the government. The individual cannot survive in this world of Dystopia because it is a sin to set yourself apart from everybody else. In the novel it says: “To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else” (pg. 101). This quote shows the concept in which…

not care about what happens to himself, Rand’s execution of this trait is very unrealistic. Roark says “I don’t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.”(26) like he is not going to put any effort into what he wants and let what happens happen. Rand probably intended this to sound like some great self-righteous proclamation but it is simply unrealistic. Realistically if Roark was truly…

“To be free a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else” (101). These words proclaimed by the main character Equality 7-2521 in the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand show the dynamic realization made in conclusion to the character’s struggle. Throughout Equality’s mental journey in the story, he develops many thoughts such as these. Thoughts questioning his society and its morals. Thoughts questioning the very foundation of the world he lives in. “We are one in all and…

You think, therefore, you are a criminal Equality smashed a window with one bare hand, grabbed his invention with the other, and leapt out of the broken window to save himself and his invention from the angry mob of so-called intellectuals who could not understand him or his genius gadget. From there he runs straight into the uncharted forest. The protagonist is trying to escape from the dystopian society imagined by Ayn Rand, in her novella Anthem. Equality, the central character of the story,…